Antiwar.com

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stilettoed her way across Europe last week answering tough questions about Washington’s treatment of prisoners in the "global war on terror," 2005 may be remembered as the year "torture" and "rendition" became part of the everyday vocabulary. The latest iteration of these issues arose from the Washington Post‘s recent … Continue reading “Torture Policy Blowback Hits White House”

Leading Sunni clerics and insurgent organizations are unofficially encouraging voting by Sunnis in Thursday’s parliamentary elections for a slate of candidates who are calling for a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal. The decision to support participation in the election is the latest step in an evolving Sunni strategy that now combines armed struggle, participation in … Continue reading “Sunnis Opt for Ballots – and Bullets”

Scott Horton: All right my friends, welcome to the Weekend Interview Show for December 3, 2005. I’m your host, Scott Horton. My Web site is WeekendInterviewShow.com. My first guest is the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who broke the story of the My Lai massacre, Seymour Hersh. Since 9/11, he has been writing an alternative history of … Continue reading “Iraq: State of the Disunion”

Editor’s note: For the next week, Antiwar.com will be on the spot in Hong Kong for the Sixth World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference. This is the first in a series about the issues surrounding the conference, the people involved, and the roles played by the U.S. and China in this debate. On paper, the … Continue reading “Setting the Stage”

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States – which was required, inter alia, to recommend actions the federal government should take to prevent future attacks – issued its final report 18 months ago. Its members have now issued an ad hoc “report card” [.pdf] on the actions thus far taken on the … Continue reading “Nuclear Threats, Real and Imagined”

European reaction to visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s statements on torture can be summed up in lead commentary Wednesday in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, among the most widely respected German newspapers. Under the title “Justice à la Rice,” the editor “translated” her message into these words: “The end justifies the means, and terrorism can be … Continue reading “Cheney and Fried Rice in Hot Water”

The spectacle of an American secretary of state being sent to Europe to reassure America’s allies that the U.S. does not torture prisoners has brought an end to America’s moral grandeur. America stands revealed before the world as just another unaccountable police state. Condi Rice’s declaration that the Bush administration is too morally pure to … Continue reading “Rendition Unto Caesar”

Last week and this one at TomDispatch are devoted to a look back at the period before and after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and at the ways in which, ever since, our world has shut itself down and sealed itself up. On that sealing up, Behzad Yaghmaian is an expert. American and Iranian, … Continue reading “Unknown Victims of 9/11”

The effort to demonize Syria and, in effect, Saddamize its ruler, Bashar al-Assad, has run up against a brick wall: the recantation of the prime witness, who says he was bribed, intimidated, and tortured into going along with the narrative being sold by UN prosecutor Mehlis – that Syrian intelligence pulled off the Feb. 14 … Continue reading “The Syrian Gambit Unravels”

Last month the New York Times reported that unnamed senior “intelligence officials” had told them that – as part of a campaign to increase international pressure on Iran – they had “briefed” International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed El-Baradei and senior staff in mid-July on some of the sensitive “intelligence” they had gleaned from a … Continue reading “Referring Nuke-Threats to Security Council”